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LETTER 



FROM 



HENRY R. JACKSON, 



OF GEORGIA, 



TO 



Ex- Senator Allen G. Thurman, 



WITH EXPLANATORY PAPERS. 



V. p. 8I8SON, PBINTER, ATLANTA, GA. 



LETTER 



FROM 



HENRY R. JACKSON, 



OF GEORGIA. 



TO 



Ex- Senator Allen G. Thurman. 



WITH EXPLANATORY PAPERS. 






PREFACE. 



The purpose of this pamphlet is to enable me to distribute correct copies of the 
following papers : 

1. My remarks to the " Confederate Veterans," at Macon, October 26th. 

2. My interview with an editor of the Atlanta Constilidtion, touching those 
remarks, published on the morning of October 29th. 

3. The attack made upon me by Ex-Senator Thurman, at Columbus, Ohio, 
on the evening of November 6th. 

4. My note, evoked by that attack, addressed to the Atlanta Constitution, 
November 7th. 

5. Judge Thurman's communication of November loth to the Associated 
Press. 

6. My open letter to him of the same date. 

It is proper to state that my letter was not written " several days'''' before its 
publication, as was erroneously telegraphed by the Associated Press. Not a word 
of it was penned until his failure to make prompt recantation of his slanderous 
charges had satisfied me that he was not the man I had taken him to be ; and that 
no retraction, worthy of a generous, or even a conscientious, nature would ever come 
from him. That I did not err in this conclusion has now been made manifest by his 
failure to take any notice whatever of my letter which, as appears from a Registry 
Return Receipt of the U. S. Post-office, was placed in his hands on the 14th instant. 
This, in connection with the closing sentences of his communication to the Assoc- 
iated Press, establishes the fact that, with the fullest light before him, he adheres, in 
cold blood, to the "bitter" calumnies he uttered against me "in his brief and off- 
hand address; " not even repudiating, or qualifying, the vulgar words in which he 
clothed them. He has thus revealed the mortifying truth that a man may rise to 
reputation in the Federal Senate who, by a chance exposure of his real nature, must 
forfeit the respect of the decent and the just. 

For what just man, who reads my letter to him, will hold me to be " not only an 
enemy of the Democratic party, but of the whole country," because of anything I 
said in my Macon speech ? What intelligent man, North or South, can question 
for a moment that I uttered the convictions of every Southron who has not pleaded, 
in his own heart, for himself or his ancestry, " Guilty of treason and murder ! " 
Where is the human imagination fertile enough to conceive of an occasion which 



%Z i '■ 



PREFACE. 

shall Impel-atlvely Call for the utterance of those convictions— assuming that they ar.e 
ever to be uttered---if the circumstances surrounding me, and the audience before 
me, at Macon, did not create it ? Tlie man who is false to his convictions when 
they involve the truth of history, and, with it, the honor of his state, his family and 
himself, even though it be by simple suppression, when occasion gives to silence 
all the significance of open denial without its boldness, must feel himself sink upon 
the scale of conscious being. What is true of the individual must needs be true of 
the social aggregation. The history of Georgia may be nothing to the world; but 
to her- people it is everything. It involves their honor ! The sad fate of a people 
dead to their honor is but a common-place in the annals of the world ; and might 
be forcibly illustrated from the condition, to-day, of certain peoples in Europe. 
Sinking the past and the future in the present; yielding to the lead of the venal 
time-server, who eclipses the sun with the acorn of self held close to the eye, they 
become, unawares, the contemned and oppressed of mankind. 

• That the world should be full of clashing convictions cannot degrade convic- 
tion itself. If convictions be honest Truth must emerge triumphant from the clash. 
Nor does the possession, or the utterance, when occasion demands it, of strong con- 
victions preclude a hearty respect for the counter convictions of others. Where is 
the Southern man, of active thought and forceful emotion, who will venture to say 
that, had he been born in tlie heart of New England, he would not have been an 
Abolitionist of the sternest sect — holding that any compact, recognizing property in 
human flesh, is a crime against God, annulling itself? Where is the man. North or 
South, observant and thoughtful, who will question the proposition that, had the 
Puritan landed on the banks of James river, and the Cavalier and the Huguenot on 
Plymouth Rock, the problem of African slavery would have worked itself out to the 
same practical results ? Are we not all, unconsciously to ourselves, the creatures of 
circumstance ? The workings of circumatance and the convictions of men are the 
property and agencies of invisible power. He that is false to the latter, or callous to 
the charity which must ever spring from a proper appreciation of the effects of the 
former, cannot be fully alive to his moral or his social duty. What union between 
men or states can be permanent, or desirable, which does not rest upon the basis of 
mutual confidence ? And of what elements can such basis be successfully built if 
not of honest convictions freely spoken, and patient charity for honest error born of 
circumstance? I rejoice in the belief that African slavery, the only cause of serious 
disturbance, removed forever, such a union has been restored — nay ! more than re- 
stored ! — to the great American sisterhood of Slates. The armies which may rally 
hereafter, under "the old flag," to defend it from aggression, come when or whence 
it may, will contain no hearts more loyal or devoted than now beat in the bosoms 
of all true Southern men. 

HENRY R. JACKSON. 
November 29, 1887. 



REMARKS AT MACON. 



Confederate Veterans : To illustrate the public virtue of 
the Romans, which exalted a town into a nation and a nation to 
the rule of the Pagan universe, Napoleon III made mention 
among others of the fact that instantly upon the close of civil 
war amnesty, unqualified, was proclaimed for all ; no triumph 
was decreed to the victor leader in such a strife; but all Rome 
went into mourning for the gallant dead of both sides. Ever 
hereafter, with patriotic delight, may we invoke the scenes of this 
day to illustrate the startling truth, that there is in American life 
an imperial power more eiFective for practical ends than the lofty 
virtue of the Roman people in the grandest epoch of Roman his- 
tory. Where else upon earth to-day are similar scenes possible ? 
Not in Hungary, where Kossuth lives ! Not in Poland, where Kos- 
ciusko fell ! Not in Ireland, though the empyrean ring with the 
mighty music of Gladstone's eloquence — not in the ' tearful ' land 
where Emmett suffered ! For to-day there stands upon the soil of 
Georo-ia the distinguished Mississippian who, within the life of the 
present generation, was a prisoner in irons — the so-called "traitor" 
leader of a so-called " lost " cause. We, Confederate veterans, relict 
of the armies which fought for that cause, are here to meet him ; 
to move before him, in the pride and pomp of no Roman triumph, 
it is true, but bending our necks to no Roman yoke of subjugation. 
By invitation of the State of Georgia, speaking through her duly 
empowered officials, all have come. Behold majestic truth reveal- 
ino- herself! State sovereignty is not dead ! Georgia is a sovereign 
still ! 

And calls upon her people to glory with her to-day. Her 
glory is in her history; her history is the memory of her dead; 
and this day is consecrate to her Confederate dead. They were 
guilty of no treason to her. To whom, then, could they be trai- 
tors? Where shall we seek their higher sovereign? Shall we 
jRnd him in the Federal Constitution ? Then here was a sovereign 
smitten to earth by traitor hands, trampled in the dust by traitor 
feet • but the hands and the feet were not theirs. Do we hold 
that the men who fought against them were traitors? Not at all; 



at all ! They too were loyal to their sovereigns. The constitu- 
tiou was but a treaty — most solemn, by-oath-upon-conscience- 
stamped compact, it is true — and yet at last but a treaty between 
high contracting sovereign parties, without one atom of sovereign- 
ty in itself. Hence, with impunity, through long years of painful 
agitation, was it broken ; broken by the sovereign parties of the 
North. Called oftentimes "a compact with hell," they enacted 
into crime the mere attempt of Federal power to enforce it within 
their dominions. And because, after decades of endurance as pa- 
tient as it was delusive, the sovereign parties of the South declined 
to accept their revolutionary will in permanent place of the con- 
stitution, the compact-breaking sovereigns of the North, with 
numbers overwhelming, and 'materiel' unbounded, made aggress- 
ive war upon them to force them to accept it. Simple record this ; 
yet forever fixed in the firmament of Truth ! Falsehood abroad, 
reckless or malignant; dallying with the false at home, ill-judged, 
cowardly or venal, cannot unfix it. As well attempt, standing 
upon a stool, to pluck a fixed star from heaven ! 

The world has been told that the people of the South made the 
war to perpetuate African slavery. This is false ! They did not 
create that institution, nor do they now wish to restore it. Not 
that shame can attach to its memory ! False indeed must be the 
historic muse to her clearest duty, if, all things being fairly con- 
sidered — the parties, the surroundings, the results — she fail to 
hand it down to future times as the gentlest, and by far the most 
civilizing and humanizing relationship ever borne by labor to 
capital. 

The people of the South flew to arras not to perpetuate, but 
to imperil, their peculiar institution ; not to save, but to sacrifice 
property in defense of honor; nay! to sacrifice life itself, rather 
than tamely submit to insolent wrong. For the right to govern 
themselves, bequeathed to them by their fathers, they were pre- 
pared to immolate all. The principle for which they fought — the * 
only principle of government expansive enough to meet the re- 
quirements of advancing civilization, made of late by Gladstone's 
eloquence so familiar to European thought — was American-born. 
Sun of the modern as compared with the ancient civilization ; 
•■'Home Rule" as contrasted with Roman centralization; it rose in 
the West, and now mounts the Western firmament, red with the 
blood of Confederate heroes, moist with the tears of Confederate 



widows and orphans. Eastward shall it continue to roll, carrying 
with it the blessed light of the Christian civilization all around 
the globe. And, so surely as it moves, it shall bring the day of 
a final triumph, to be decreed by the mind and conscience of man 
to time-tested truth. In that triumphal procession, Abraham Lin- 
coln shall not move as the rightful president, but Jefferson Davis, 
the so-called "traitor" leader of a so-called "lost" cause. The 
memory of those chains will thrill along that awful line with a 
power never given to mortal eloquence. In that silent, but ma- 
jestic, march will move " the Confederate States of America," each 
wearing her truth-studded crown of sovereignty untarnished ; 
Georgia bearing in her proud arms her Bartow, her Cobb, her 
Walker, her blood-stained heroes unnumbered, who fell with a 
sense of the coming glory uneclipsed in their souls. 

If this be the coming of Hhe new South' — name which occu- 
pies the air at times — then we, Confederate veterans, cry : New 
South, all hail! Do we not, my brothers? All. hail! renovated 
Union of Sovereign States, as planned by the common fathers, 
who ' worked more wisely than they knew.' All hail, grand 
American Republic of wheels within a wheel ; resplendent illumi- 
nator of the modern world ! We, we, too, Confederates, can echo 
from our hearts, and re-echo from our heart of hearts, the patriot 
cry of Webster the Great : " Thanks be to God that I, I, too, am 
an American citizen!" 

But if the so-called new South be a base surrender of the old ; 
a false confession — meanly false ! — 'of shame in our past, shame in 
our sires, shame in our dead, which none but the silliest fool can 
honestly feel, then, with all the power given to us by the God of 
Truth, we cry: Avaunt! false South, avaunt ! ! Rotten trunk 
upon a cursed root, thy fruit must turn to ashes on the lip! 



INTERVIEW AT ATLANTA. 

An editor of The Constitution had a talk with General Jack- 
son about his speech. He was surprised at the wide discussion it 
promised to provoke, but found no occasion in this to revise or re- 
view anything he had said. Mr. Jackson said : 

"When I was invited to Macon to make the address on the oc- 



casion of Mr. Davis' last appearance before his people, I felt it 
would be proper for me to express there and in that presence the 
convictions I have held all my life, and I did so." 

" What about the sentence quoted above as the Lincoln-Davis 
sentence ? " 

"That sentence, with its context, should explain itself; but as 
it may be subject to misconstruction, which misconstruction may 
do injury beyond my personal relations, I will give you the pre- 
cise line of thought that led u[) to it. You will find at once in 
this a statement and an argument from which no man who believes 
as I believe can dissent. 

" It has been my conviction all my life that the model govern- 
ment would be reached on this earth through local sovereignty, as 
opposed to the centralization of power. I reached this conviction 
when I was a young man, and ray observ^ation and study have but 
deepened it. We find illustrations of its truth on all sides. In 
France, twenty-five thousand men in Paris, the most irresponsible 
and worthless element of its population, if you please, can pre- 
cipitate a revolution that will involve the whole country. Mr. 
Gladstone, seeingthe danger of the centralization of power, is giv- 
ing the last and best years of his life to an appeal for home rule, 
and an argument against lodging in London the local rights that 
should be lodged in Dublin. In this country, where the plan of 
state sovereignty still lives, New York may engage to-morrow in 
a war with her unemployed laborers. Blood may run in the streets 
of her principal cities, and Georgia, and perhaps no other state, 
would be involved except so far as they voluntarily operated to 
the protection of New York, 

"It is my conviction, therefore, as it has always been, that 
when the solution of the problem of human government is found, 
it will be found in a lodgment of local sovereignties in local com- 
monwealths. It was the triumph of this principle of which I 
spoke in my address. It was for this princi[)le that Mr. Davis 
fought, and against this principle that Mr. Lincoln fought. Mr. 
Davis represented state sovereignty. Mr. Lincoln stood for a cen- 
tralized nation. When my prediction comes true, if it should 
come true, that the true principle of successful government is local 
rights lodged in local sovereignties, in that triumph Mr. Davis 
would take precedence by virtue of the triumph of the principle 
of government for which he fought. This principle and its dis- 



cussion are not local to America. They are as wide as human civ- 
ilization, and are being fought out to-day in England as they have 
been fought in America for more than a century.' 

"You insisted in your speech that the South did not fight to 
protect slavery ? " 

" I did, and this is concurrent with what I have just said. It 
was for the principle of state sovereignty that the South fought. 
She imperiled slavery when she began the war. She could easily 
have perpetuated slavery if she had been willing to sacrifice the 
principle of state sovereignty. She put both to the gauge. of bat- 
tle, knowing perfectly that whatever the issue of the war might 
be, slavery would suffer. Suppose we had conquered, we would 
have simply moved the Canada line to the borders of the South- 
ern Confederacy, and would have changed the line of the lakes 
to the Ohio river. It is not too much to say that wise men in 
the South believed that, even if the South should be successful, 
the institution of slavery would be put in imminent peril thereby. 
It is due to the honor of the South and the truth of history 
that it should be declared, now and forevermore, that the South 
did not fight because of slavery, but that it fought in spite of 
slavery, and to the peril of slavery. To support a governmental 
principle, the wisdom of which will be demonstrated in England, 
and the lack of which has many times plunged France into cause- 
less and irresponsible revolution, the South deliberately put in 
jeopardy an institution involving its entire labor system, and over 
four hundred million dollars of property. It was to make this 
fact clear that much of my speech was spoken. 

"Will you pardon me," General Jackson continued, "since 
you deem this subject of enough importance to seek this interview, 
for repeating briefly my position. I attempted to make plain two 
things in my speech. First, that the South did not fight for slav- 
ery, but that she fought for a governmental principle in spite of 
slavery and to the peril of slavery. Second, that this govern- 
mental principle, which is not local to this country, but which is 
world-wide, is the principle upon which successful human govern- 
ment must finally be built; and incidentally, and purely incident- 
ally, that Mr. Davis having represented this principle of state 
sovereignty, which I believe to be the true one, and of the ulti- 
mate triumph of which over this world I am sure, would when 
that triumph came to the world take precedence of Mr. Lincoln, 



9 

who fought for the opposite, and as I believe unwise and perni- 
cious principle of centralized power. You may understand how 
incidental this personal allusion was when I tell you that I yield' 
to few men in my admiration for Mr. Lincoln as a man. From 
the day that he and Mr. Seward, with their carpet bags in hand, 
came to the Fortress Monroe conference, earnest to meet the con- 
federate authorities, I realized that he was a patriot of great pro- 
portions, and a statesman of practical sense and of absolute 
devotion to his convictions. 

" I spoke for a principle to which all personal allusions, or 
even all American allusions, were subordinate. The conflict over 
that principle and the victory in its final struggle are world- 
wide." 



THURMAN'S ATTACK. 

[ASSOCIATED PRESS DISPATCH.] 

Columbus, Ohio, November 6, 1887. 

Judge Thurman, late last night, in an address to the Thuriiian 
Club, at which only members and invited guests were present, used 
the following worils in speaking of Judge Jackson's recent speech 
at Macon, Georgia. He said : 

'* An old crank down in Georgia, by the name of Jackson — 
God forgive him for bearing that name — a disappointed politician, 
a man whom Grover Cleveland recalled from his mission to Mex- 
ico, some say because he got too drunk there to be of any use. I 
do not know how that is, I am not accustomed to making personal 
charges, but what I do know is that the president recalled him, 
and, from the day he was recalled to this day, it is said that the 
president and the democratic party have no more malignant enemy 
in the United States than he. [Applause.] This old fool, at a 
meeting at Macon, a month ago, or something like that, saw fit to 
make a speech, and declare that the doctrine of secession was not 
dead. Why, my friends, if a man can make such a declaration as 
that, and not be an idiot, or what is worse, a mischief-maker, then 
I don't know what idiocy and mischief-making are. The doctrine 
of secession not dead ! Why, whatever life it had was killed stone 
dead by the civil war. Everybody who has the least honesty him- 



10 

self must acknowledgje that. Where is it that it is alive? Where 
is the necessity of blowing trumpets, and beating drums, and 
sounding bugles in the North to put down the doctrine of seces- 
sion, when the South itself, in the most emphatic and binding man- 
ner in which men can speak, have put it uuder their feet ? " 



NOTE TO THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION. 

Marietta, Ga., November 7, 1887. 

Messrs. Editors : The statement, which Judge Thurman is re- 
ported to have made about me at Columbus, Ohio, to the effect 
that Grover Cleveland recalled me from my mission to Mexico, 
and his intimation that I was recalled because I got too drunk 
there to be of any use, are utterly false and destitute of the slight- 
est foundation in foot. I was not recalled, except at my own re- 
quest. I resigned of my own volition, without a suggestion from 
any one, for reasons perfectly satisfactory to myself. My resigna- 
tion thus tendered was not accepted for months. Judge Thurman 
further states that the President and Democratic party have no 
more malignant enemy in the United States than I. This is 
equally false. I have too high respect for Judge Thurman's char- 
acter to doubt that he will be quick to correct these gross misrep- 
resentations, which, if he made them at all, I cannot believe he 
would have knowingly made. 

Yours very truly, 

Henry R. Jackson. 



THURMAN'S COMMUNICATION. 

Columbus, Ohio, November 10, 1887. 

Ex-Senator Allen G. Thurman furnishes the following 
to the Associated Press to-day : 

" I have seen in the Dispatch of yesterday eventng, a card of 
General Henry R. Jackson, in relation to some remarks of mine 
in my brief and off-hand address to the Thurman club last Satur- 



11 

day night. I am glad to learn by the General's card that the 
report to which I alluded in respect to his recall from the mission 
to Mexico, was unfounded in fact. I am incapable of wilfully 
doing any man injustice, and had 1 known what I now learn from 
General Jackson's card, I should not have alluded, however re- 
motely, to the report to which I referred. What I said about the 
doctrine of secession was an expression of opinion. It is still my 
opinion that whoever preaches the doctrine of secession as a living 
issue, is not only an enemy of the Democratic party, but of the 
whole country, and smarting under the injury done the Democratic 
party of Ohio by General Jackson's Macon speech, which the re- 
sult of the election has made apparent to every one, it is not 
surprising that I used language that may seem harsh and even bit- 
ter. Yet, feeling as I do, hardly any language too strong could 
be used in condemnation of the sectional si)eeches recently made 
in the North, and of this one in the South. 

Respectfully, A. G. Thurman. 



LETTER. 



Marietta, Ga., November 10, 1887. 
Hon. Ai.len G. Thurman, Columbus, Ohio : 

Sir — In the Atlanta Constitution of the 7th instant there ap- 
peared a telegraphic dispatch giving an address delivered by your- 
self to the Thurman club, in Columbus, Ohio, on the evening of 
the 6th, which was full of statements in regard to myself as grave 
in their character as they are uti^erly baseless in fact. Without 
cause, without provocation, without the slightest justification, you 
have slandered me, and it has become my duty to defend myself 
against your vile as})ersions. 

1. It is reported that you used the following words : "An old 
crank, down in Georgia, by the name of Jackson — God forgive 
him for bearing that name — a disappointed politician; a man whom 
Grover Cleveland recalled from his mission to Mexico, some say 
because he got too drunk there to be of any use." 



" 12 

It so happens tliat, during my whole life, I have never sought 
a purely political office. There have been occasions when some of 
ray friends wished me to seek, and other occasions when it seemed 
as if my immediate people might desire me to take, such office ; 
but I have declined it. Since attaining my manhood I have never 
sought by myself, or through my friend^, office of any kind which 
I have failed to obtain. In dcscriliing me as a "disappointed pol- 
itician " you have uttered words which are wholly destitute of 
truth. 

Application to the records of the department of state will 
show that I was retired from the Mexican mission by the accept- 
ance of my voluntary resignation, tendered at the instance of no 
one ; and that my resignation had been received by the Secretary 
of State months before the date of its acceptance. I have been 
anxious that the causes which led to it should be given to the pub- 
lic, believing that my course would thus be fully vindicated. The 
Senate, under resolution introduced by a senator from Georgia, at 
its last session, called for my correspondence ; but the president 
declined to submit it; and so the matter ended. Nothing, there- 
fore, occurred in Mexico, and there is nothing connected with my 
mission in that country, to justify the coarse reflection you have 
cast upon me. 

2. You proceeded to say : "What I do know is, that the presi- 
dent recalled him, and, from the day he was recalled to this day, 
it is said that the President and the Democratic party have no 
more malignant enemy in the United States than he." 

Who besides yourself has said this? Can you name the man 
who has thought it? And upon what revelations of fact did you 
dare to say it? Was it not born of the pernicious habit of judg- 
ing others by oneself? . Does not each of us carry within himself 
his own type of our common humanity? My answer to you, sir, 
is that he who judges most harshly of another is the severest critic 
of himself! Your slanderous imputation is absolutely fiilse. 

3. With the same wanton mendacity you proceeded further to 
say: "This old fool, at a meeting a month ago, or something like 
that, saw fit to make a speech, and declared the doctrine of seces- 
sion was not dead. Why, my friends, if a man can make such a 
declaration as that and not be an idiot, or what is worse, a mischief- 
maker, then I don't know what idiocy and mischief-making are. 



13 

The doctrine of secession not dead ! Why, whatever life it had 
was killed stone dead by the civil war. Everybody who has the 
least honesty himself will acknowledge that." 

And so it appears that you did not hesitate to charge me with 
a total want of honesty upon false statements which should never 
have come from the lips of an honest man. It is clear that you 
had not even read the speech upon which you were commenting. 
Else you would have known that it made not the remotest reference 
to the doctrine of secession. So far from it, the speech, in its 
summing up, was emphatically an " union speech." What stronger 
words could I have possibly used than the following? 

"All hail! renovated union of sovereign states as planned by 
the common fethers, who ' worked more wisely than they knew.' 
All hail! grand American republic of wheels within a wheel; re- 
splendent illuminator of the modern world. We, we, too. Con- 
federates, can echo from our hearts, and re-echo from our heart of 
hearts, the patriot cry of Webster, the Great : 'Thanks be to God 
that I, I, too, am an American citizen ! ' " 

Yet again ; in what respect did I depart from the recognized 
creed of the national democracy by my use of these other words 
in the body of my speech ? " For the right to govern themselves, 
bequeathed to them by their fathers, they were prepared to immo- 
late all. The principle for which they fought — the only principle 
of government expansive enough to meet the requirements of ad- 
vancing civilization, made of late by Gladstone's eloquence so 
familiar to European thought — was American born. Sun of the 
modern as compared with the ancient civilization ; ' home rule,' as 
contrasted with Roman centralization, it rose in the West." Is it 
not true that, at the base of Democratic faith, as laid by the great 
founder of the Democratic party, Mr. Jefferson, was placed the 
doctrine of local self-government ? Was Mr. Jefferson, or has 
the Democratic party ever been, less devoted to the union of the 
states because they have defended most consistently and earnestly 
the doctrine of local self-government against the doctrine of central- 
ized power? Apart from the great fact that local self-government 
anteceded and created the constitution itself, and could but be rec- 
ognized and assured by its own creature, is not the practice of 
local self-government the surest means; nay, is it not the only 



u 

available means, of preserving the Union as it is? Must we not 
look to the same local self-government for the preservation of onr 
political, liberty against the dangers of centralized power, which 
never yet in the history of the world has failed to destroy it? 

In this immediate connection, and in view of the fact that the 
history of my mission to Mexico lias been so siuimefully perverted 
by yourself and others, I yield to the temptation of saying that I 
accepted the missi, n in the hope of accomplishing something to 
disabuse the Mexican mind of the idea that the American people 
desired to destroy Mexican nationality by annexation. Ever since 
I served as a soldier in the war against that country, I have felt a 
deep personal interest in her fate. 1 have felt that the United States 
owed to her the duty of practical assistance at crises when 
she might be in dire necessity; and I cherished the hope that I 
might become an humble instrument of dispelling delusions, of 
removing obstructions, of bringing the countriescioser together by 
a treaty broad enough and strong enough to effect all that was 
desirable; and, perchance, in the end, of securing such practical 
aid as would speed the Mexican republic upon a future of prog- 
ress at once immediate and illimitable. 

Subjected as I have been to an amount of misrepresentation 
and abuse which has filled me with amazement, I have feared at 
times that I might have said something unwise or imprudent in 
my Macon speech ; and yet I am unable to find it. The Confed- 
erate veterans had been called together upon a day which was 
named "Veterans' Day," to meet the ex-president of the Confed- 
erate States, who, it was reasonable to suppose from his advanced 
years and feeble health, might never again appear in public. J 
had been invited to make a speech ; a speech to be adapted to such 
an occasion; a speech to be addressed by a Confederate veteran to 
Confederate veterans, and in contemplation of the graves of their 
comrades slain in battle. Was it improper in such a speech to re- 
cite briefly the political creed, in defense of which they took up 
arras, and their faith in which is the only bulwark to protect their 
characters and memories from condemnation by the world and by 
history ? Was it untimely, or out of place, or improper, to re- 
lieve them and their people from the charge, so generally made, of 
having caused a bloody and desolating war for the purpose of pro- 
tecting the institution of African slavery ? Was it not right to say 



was it not my duty to say, if 1 believed it to be true? that: " The 
people of the South flew to arms not to perpetuate, but to iruperil 
their peculiar institution; not to save, but to sacrifice property in 
defense of honor; nay, to sacrifice life itself rather than submit to 
insolent wrong. For the right to govern themselves, bequeathed 
to them by their fathers, they were prepared to immolate all." 

Did tliey not immolate all? They certainly had their right as 
tenants in common to the name, the flag, the capitol, the army and 
navy, and all the property of the United States. This right they 
relinquished forever. They had specially contended for the right 
to carry any of their property into the territories. They aban- 
doned forever all vestige of right in those territories; an 1, denud- 
ing themselves of everything beyond their own soil, they faced the 
appalling danger of being hurried, almost armless, into the field of 
battle to defend the only right they did not surrender — the right 
to govern themselves. I venture to say that never before has the 
world seen a sacrifice so stupendous to a single principle. 

Was it unnatural that I should rejoice in the belief that this 
principle will vindicate itself in the future of the world, or that I 
should endeavor to impress my own conviction upon the minds of 
my audience by illustration ? It was for this purpose, and this 
purpose only, that the names of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis were 
introduced into my speech ; and I have been pained by learning 
that this illustration, or anything 1 uttered, has been j)erverted 
into a reflection upon the memory of Mr. Lincoln. I have always 
regarded him as a statesman and a patriot, though he represented 
political principles adverse to those entertained at the South. At 
a critical period in the history of this country he was called to 
sustain and defend the theory of government under which he had 
been educated. With a simple faith, an unbending will, and tire- 
less energy, he devoted himselMto-the discharge of his duty as he 
understood it. At the very mom^it that victory had crowned his 
herculean efforts, his heart was pierced by the assassin's bullet ; 
and I have always realized that then fell the most powerful friend 
the South had in the day of her humiliation. That fatal shot 
brought upon her, in the calamities of Republican reconstruction, 
sufl'ering and loss without a parallel. President Lincoln has not 
a friend, political or personal, who is prepared to yield greater ad- 
miration than I to his catholic patriotism, and to his extraordinary 
career as a representative American. 



\ I 



16. 



Simply because of ray having made a speech of such character, 
upon such an occasion, to an audience of veteran soldiers, called 
together for no political purpose whatever, you, and the swarm of 
insects which have been buzzing about my name, delighted, per- 
haps, in the thought that they were inflicting upon me the venom 
of their stings, have held me up to the world as the meanly vin- 
dictive enemy of the Democratic party, prepared to harm it to the 
full extent of my malignant power. Is it possible that we of the 
South are thus to be welcomed back into the Union, even by the 
Democratic party of the North ? Are we to stand in 'perpetual 
terror of opening our mouths, anywhere, or upon any occasion, to 
say one word in commendation of our past, or in honor of our 
dead, or in vindication of what we know to be the truth of his- 
tory, lest we may say something " to injure the Democratic 
party?" Is it not sufficient that we have been stripped of our 
property, and of many things far dearer to us than property can 
ever be? Must we also consent to sink our good name into the 
abyss of silence ? Must we keep our peace, unless we be prepared 
to kiss the hand that smites us, and to place ourselves iu the line 
of truckling hypocrites? Must our children grow up around us, 
hearing at the home fireside the story of the past, and realizing 
that their fathers dare not repeat it in the face of the world? Will 
this be the school in which to train them for the manful discharge 
of the grand duties imposed by American civilization upon the 
American citizen ? JPVom the time they begin to perceive and to 
think for themselves, thus to be crushed to the dust by the cruel 
consciousness that, however pure and patriotic in fact their sires 
may have been, in the opinion of the' world they were guilty of an 
enormous historic crime, the shadow of which must rest forever, 
like a black cloud of ignominy, upon the pride, the hope and man- 
hood of their posterity ? /» i- 

( 



Rather than this I would indeed secede, not simply from the 
union of my fathers, but from my own native state, so dear to my 
heart, and seek, if need be, a home in the depths of barbarism. 
Nay, rather than this I would long for that barbaric conscience, 
which would enable me, with one movement of a devoted arm, 
to sweep every drop of my blood in the descending generations 
from the face of the earth. 

Henry R. Jackson. 



LIBRARY OF CONFESS 
013 764 573 7 



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